The Fitzwilliam drawing (cat. no. 16) is the earliest of Burne-Jones's remarkable exercises in draftsmanship in pencil on a large scale. The medium offered a greater tonal contrast than was possible in the pen-and-ink drawings of 1858-59, and allowed even more delicate detail, as exemplified in the singing bird on the extreme left and the fragile plants in the foreground. The more vigorous foliage, including sun- flower and poppies, is carried over from the stylized back- ground to the ink drawing of Childe Roland (cat. no. 14). The female figure has previously been identified as Jane Morris, but seems more likely to be modeled from Fanny Cornforth, of whom there is a pencil drawing ascribed to this date in which she is wearing an identical flowing dress. 1 The mood of the subject has been compared with the relaxed atmosphere of the Morrises' social life at Red House, described by Georgiana Burne-Jones as "more a poem than a house," with an exterior porch and rose trellis where guests would sit and talk. 2 Converted to watercolor, the image has a corresponding airiness that balances the dark, suffused colors and stiff, dry brushwork which recalls the technique of the artist's first men- tor, Rossetti. It forms part of a group of small early watercol- ors in this style, including The Goldfish Pool (1861-62; Carlisle Art Gallery) and An Idyll (1862; Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery), both of which found ready buyers among Burne-Jones's circle of friends. Shown at the winter exhibition of the New Water-Colour Society, The Backgammon Players received a notice in the Athenaeum, where it was described as a "sketch for a larger picture, representing a lady and a knight in Venetian costume, playing at backgammon in a garden pleasaunce. ... A poetic richness of tone and sentiment mark this picture." 3 It was then donated by the artist to a bazaar sale for the relief of Lancashire weavers during the cotton famine of 1862-63, occasioned by the blockade of the South during the American Civil War. 4 It was said to have been "later discov- ered in a shop by Mr. Holman Hunt, who bought it for a few pounds," 5 but no other documentation is known before its appearance in the collection of the Birmingham brewer and collector Sir John Holder. The large drawing was acquired in 1861 by James Anderson Rose, a solicitor who acted for Rossetti and who was also a col- lector; his taste for such presentation works led him to become the most important early patron of Frederick Sandys. 1. Christie's, June 9, 1995, lot 270, illus. 2. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 212. 3. Athenaeum, December 27, 1862, p. 850. 4. In a letter probably of November 1862, Ruskin tried to persuade Ellen Heaton, already a patron of Rossetti and Arthur Hughes, to buy the work: "Jones is just finishing a picture of two people playing at chess in a garden— I think it will be pretty. He wants to send its price to Manchester starving people, has done it for that" (Virginia Surtees, ed., Sublime and Instructive: Letters from John Ruskin to Louisa, Marchioness of Waterford, Anna Blunden, and Ellen Heaton [London, 1972], p. 245). 5. De Lisle 1904, p. 62.
Signed and dated lower right "EJB 1861" Fitzwilliam work list "1861 pencil drawing of Chessplayers - Rose" After a period at Little Holland House in 1858, the artist came under the influence of G F Watts which is shown in this drawing with its greater attention to modelling and its larger scale.
The model for the right-hand figure is Fanny Cornforth